The buzz ahead of last night’s game between Leeds United and Manchester United made me realise how much I miss Leeds being in the top flight.

It was only a League Cup match featuring fringe Manchester United players, but that barely dampened the pernicious atmosphere between the two clubs who’ve been deadly rivals at various stages in their histories.

No club has a right to be in the Premier League and Leeds were relegated after overspending and living beyond their means, but the Leeds v United games is one of the great rivalries of English football and I miss it, just as I’d miss playing Liverpool or Everton if they were relegated.

Trips to Goodison Park or Anfield are among the highlights of the season for United fans.

They’re proper clubs with fine histories, traditions and home grounds, unlike the plethora of new identikit flat-pack stadiums from Stoke to Sunderland.

Everton and Liverpool both unquestionably have to move with the times and the demands for more corporate seating. But wouldn’t it be good if they could develop their existing sites?

Thankfully, the Merseysiders don’t do relegation, but former Yorkshire giants like Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday, clubs with huge support and historic old stadiums, find themselves struggling at a lower level.

They’ve been replaced in the top flight by bankrolled new boys: Wigan Athletic, Fulham and Queens Park Rangers.

I know some great Wigan fans who’ve followed their club for decades (most of them prefer the pre-Premier League days), but their club is an artificial construct. With more and more investors buying clubs, that model will become the norm distorting the Premiership. Manchester City and Chelsea would not be where they are without the billions amassed through the sale of natural resources by their foreign owners.

It’s a more complex issue than this column could ever go into and clubs like Bolton or Sunderland also have owners pumping millions in, but with every rich benefactor, life becomes tougher for the Evertons, Leeds or Sheffield Wednesdays and I’m not convinced that is right.

You might say, “Tough, that’s the way of the capitalist world which football has embraced”, but I’d rather wake up on a Saturday – or any of the other days that football is now played – morning and face the prospect of playing Leeds United over Fulham.

Elland Road is a great place to watch football and to see your team. The stadium is an uneasily juxtaposed mish-mash of stands from the various eras in which Leeds enjoyed success – the 70s and 90s – but it’s unmistakably Leeds. It’s their home and the stadium says more about their history than any huge new out-of-town bowl located off a motorway. Actually, a motorway runs right by the side of Elland Road and the walk underneath it to the away end is one of the most unnerving an away fan can make, hearing locals screaming “Yorkshire Republican Army!”

One senior United official once told me that the club enjoyed good relations with the Merseyside clubs and neighbours City, but not “them over the Pennines.” There’s not a single Premier League club in Yorkshire while the old county of Lancashire boasts seven.

The enmity between the two Uniteds runs deep and can be traced back to a civic rivalry during the industrial revolution. Older players recall scraps aplenty in the 1965 FA Cup clashes.

“Jack Charlton and Denis Law wrestled like two schoolboys in a playground as players swapped punches,” recalls former United midfielder Pat Crerand. “I was in the middle as usual, scrapping with Billy Bremner or anyone else who wanted a fight. Bremner was a great player, but you often find that someone who is small with red hair and from Scotland has a point to prove in life and are usually aggressive. Billy was and did.”

Players who crossed the divide continue to be shunned. Gordon McQueen and Joe Jordan, who moved in the late 70s, still get abuse when they return to Elland Road, while a man called Cantona left hearts broken from Pudsey to Pontefract when he departed for a pittance in 1992.